SALT LAKE CITY, Feb 25: Two cross-country skiers were sensationally stripped of their Winter Olympics gold medals Sunday after three athletes tested positive for a new blood-boosting drug as the Salt Lake City Games drew to a close.

Russian Larisa Lazutina lost the gold medal she had won only hours earlier in the women’s 30 km classical race and Spain’s Johann Muehlegg had the 50 km classical gold medal he won Saturday taken away.

Both athletes and Russian Olga Danilova, another world-class cross-country skier, tested positive for the blood-boosting drug darbepoetin, International Olympic Committee (IOC) director general Francois Carrard told a news conference.

It was the first time any athlete had tested positive for the new drug and the three cases were the first of the 17-day Winter Games. All three athletes were immediately excluded from the Games ahead of Sunday night’s closing ceremony.

In the final sporting action of the Olympics, Canada beat the United States 5-2 in the men’s ice hockey to win their first Olympic gold medal in the sport for 50 years.

Lazutina’s disqualification handed the gold medal in the women’s 30 km to Italy’s Gabriella Paruzzi.

The veteran Lazutina, 36, skiing in her last Olympics, would have equalled the record for the most women’s Winter Games gold medals with her sixth title.

But the Russian will keep the two silver medals she won earlier at the Games because she passed doping tests for those events.

Ironically, Russia gained a cross-country gold medal — because of Muehlegg’s disqualification. Muehlegg keeps the two gold medals he won earlier in the Games but the 50 km classical went to original runner-up Mikhail Ivanov.

The third athlete to test positive, Danilova, who had won a gold and silver medal earlier in the Games, finished only eighth in the 30-km race and was disqualified from that event only.

Scientists have estimated that darbepoetin, a relatively new drug on the market, is 10 times more powerful than EPO (erythropoietin) which also stimulates the production of oxygen-carrying red blood cells.

Paruzzi won her surprise gold medal for Italy in the women’s cross-country after finishing a massive one minute 48 seconds behind Lazutina.

Stefania Belmondo made it an Italian one-two when she moved up from bronze to silver medal position and Norway’s Bente Skari was promoted to the bronze.

In the ice hockey final, staged while the positive dope tests were being announced elsewhere, Canada scored three unanswered goals after the United States had levelled the game at 2-2.

Members of the 1952 gold medal-winning team, the last to take the title for Canada, were sitting in the crowd.

Joe Sakic restored Canada’s lead just before the end of the second period and two further goals in the last four minutes of the final period by Jarome Inigla and Sakic, his second of the game, sealed victory.

The Games were closed by International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge, who gave the traditional invitation to the youth of the world to assemble in Turin in four years.

ZAGREB: Up to a hundred thousand Croatians gathered Monday at the capital Zagreb’s main Trg Bana Jelacica square to welcome Croatia’s Olympic triple gold medallist Janica Kostelic, called here “Janica, the Snow Queen.”